Roglic collapses and narrowly avoids defeat to Jorgenson, Rodriguez clinches stage win

Primoz Roglic is usually all smiles, but the Slovenian from BORA-hansgrohe realized shortly after finishing the eighth stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné that he had barely escaped disaster. Roglic cracked early and ultimately retained only eight seconds of his 1.02-minute lead over Matteo Jorgenson.

Like the rest, Roglic had to push to his limit to keep his yellow jersey, and he succeeded. However, joy was not immediate when a soigneur tried to put a towel around his neck. "No, I don't need a towel, I'm hot. I have a sweatshirt on, a bad choice, huh!" Fierce and somewhat agitated, the Dauphiné's overall winner then got on his bike to cool down.

When the organization later interviewed him as the winner of this edition, his smile had returned. "I did not expect this, no," he smiled, referring to the tight seconds game with Jorgenson from Visma | Lease a Bike. "But winning the Dauphiné, with everything that has happened in between, that's beautiful."

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Roglic wants to enjoy his Dauphiné victory

Roglic faced quite a few challenges in the French stage race. During the major crash on Thursday in the fifth stage, the BORA leader sustained a shoulder injury. It did not stop him from winning the stages on Friday and Saturday and securing a firm hold on the yellow jersey. "It was crazy with all those crashes and things that happened, things you'd rather not see. But that's also cycling. This gives confidence for the Tour de France, although the Dauphiné is something different. I'm happy and want to enjoy this because you don't win a race like this every day."

Roglic seemed to have things under control even when he cracked in the final stage. He let his BORA-hansgrohe teammates do the work and kept Jorgenson and his companions in sight for a long time. Only in the final kilometers did he seriously start to lose ground. "I could see them almost the whole time and was getting the time gaps. It was close, but fortunately in my favor. Perfect. Ultimately, I suffered a lot in the last three days, something we needed as a team."